The Festival de Cannes Directors’ Fortnight revealed its line-up today.

Belgian-French co-production The Fairy, the new film by Rumba makers Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy, will open the sidebar on May 12, while Bouli Lanners‘ The Giants (Belgium-France-Luxembourg) will close it on May 22.

In between, French filmmaker André Téchiné will premiere his new film Impardonnables, alongside films by younger directors, nine of whom will be competing for the Camera d’Or, awarded each year for best first film.

Among these are first features by Roland Edzard (France); Jean-Jacques Jauffret (France); Liza Johnson (USA); Rebecca Daly (Ireland); Rúnar Rúnarsson (Denmark).

Two films screen from South America: Porfiro (Colombia), directed by Brazilian director Alejandro Landes,  and O Abismo prataedo, directed by Karim Ainouz. From Japan is the new film directed by Sion Sono, a graphic sexual thriller showing in its 2hr20 director’s cut.

Returning to the sidebar are directors Kamen Kalev (Bulgaria) and Gust Van den Berghe (Belgium) and Vimukthi Jayasundara (Sri Lanka); the latter directed the Camera d’Or-winning The Forsaken Land in 2005.

The sidebar’s artistic director Frédéric Boyer said in Paris today, “The more you make the selection, the more you have to think about how to make all these films make sense, as a whole selection. We would have wanted 300 films, but we can only keep 25 of them. We are aware that we might disappoint. Cinema is not only about simplicity, it also has to be a reflection on ourselves.”

The Directors’ Fortnight runs May 12-22. The full selection can be seen here.